Oswald Cray: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

You have heard and read of those false promises that keep faith to the eye and break it to the spirit, bringing a flood-tide of anguish in their train. As such may be described the realisation of the long-deferred hope--the money--so anxiously expected by Sara Davenal. It came in due course, after a little more waiting; that is, the order to receive it was sent to her: but it did not bring pleasure with it. For the sales had not realised so much as was anticipated. Do they ever realise as much? Dr. Davenal had expected there would be about three thousand pounds: five hundred over and above the sum owing. But the money fell short by two hundred pounds even of this sum: and there was not enough to pay Mr. Alfred King.

O it was a great burthen to be thrown upon this girl in her early years, in her solitary loneliness! When the news came, and the small sum of money stared her in the face in figures all black and white, she looked around her in despondency. She felt that she had no friend, save God.

Feeling half-hopeless, Sara sat down and considered what was to be done. Two thousand three hundred pounds certainly were not two thousand five hundred, and she had little expectation that Mr. Alfred King would be satisfied with it. An ordinary creditor, whose debt was a legitimate one, would of course not remit two hundred pounds: but this debt was different, for she had every reason to believe it was no legitimate debt, but money paid to purchase silence. Then a voice whispered her they would be all the less likely to remit it; they would hold out for it to to the last farthing. Whose silence she could not tell. But for the mysterious hint of Mr. Alfred King that others were interested in this business she might have thought it was his alone. The disagreeable impression left upon her mind by that interview had not in the least worn away: she greatly disliked Mr. Alfred King; she very greatly disliked the thought of visiting him again.

"Mark must help me," she said. "He is rolling in wealth, and two hundred pounds will not be much to him. It will be my own money. His covenant with my dear papa was to pay me three hundred pounds yearly for five years, and he has not begun the payment yet." Quite true Mr. Mark Cray had not yet handed over a shilling of the covenant money. Miss Davenal had pressed for some of it at the time of Mark's quitting Hallingham, but Mark had declined. She had brought it under his notice since, and Mark had made excuses still. He was not bound to pay it until the expiry of the year subsequent to Dr. Davenal's death, he said, and it would be most convenient to him to pay it then. Too proud to press the matter further for her niece, Miss Davenal contented herself with a dignified silence: but she did wonder whether it was that Mark would not or could not pay it. If he could not, why then how hollow, how false was all the show and luxury they had entered on in Grosvenor Place! The real truth of the matter was, Mark's expenses of one kind or another were so great that he had no ready money to spare; on the contrary, he was often at positive fault for some. And Mark was not a willing paymaster at the best of times: these careless spendthrift men frequently are not.

Yet the Great Wheal Bang was flourishing: how flourishing its elated shareholders could tell you; and Oswald Cray, relying on the assurances of his brother, had embarked his thousand in it. That alarming dispatch, with its still more alarming news, had turned out to be more smoke than fire; and when Mr. Barker reached the mine, whither he had hurried with all speed, he found the danger over. There had been an irruption of water, but a very slight one; it did not transpire beyond the locality: and Barker and Mark kept the secret well from the shareholders.

Sara went to Mark. She told him, speaking very gravely, that she had urgent need of two hundred pounds to complete some arrangements of necessity left in her charge by her father. Mark's answer was that he could not help her then; that it was not in his power. Perhaps he could not. They had not yet begun to realise, for that untoward accident, slight as it was, had served to retard the works, and there was no lead yet in the market. A short while, Mark said, and she might come to him for two thousand, and welcome, if it would be of any service to her. Large promises! But Mark had always dealt in such.

Sara had nowhere else to turn to for money in the wide world. Her aunt she knew could not help her; Miss Davenal's income was of a certain extent only, and their living absorbed it. So she wrote to Mr. Alfred King, and he appointed a day to meet her in Essex Street.

Once more, once more, she had to go forth to the unpleasant interview. All was unpleasant connected with it; the object, the journey, the very house, and Mr. Alfred King himself: but she was obeying the command of her dead father, she was seeking to save the reputation, perhaps the life, of her living brother; and Sara Davenal was not one to shrink on her own account from responsibilities such as these.

But surely the spirit of mischief was in it all? It seemed like an evil fate upon her--at least, so she thought in her vexation. For on this day, as on the other, she encountered Mr. Oswald Cray.

Not at the offices, but at the gate of the Temple garden. It occurred in this way. As before, she found she had to wait a considerable time before she could see Alfred King, and she wandered into the quiet courts of the Temple, and came to the larger garden.